The ALEKS program is a new program that will help the ninth grade students that did not pass the Keystone exam the first time. This new program is both similar and different from the Cognitive Tutor program.
This year, the ninth grade students now have to pass the Keystone exam to graduate. If they did not pass the first time, or if they do not pass the second time, they will have to take it once again in the high school.
This program covers the same topics that appeared on the first Keystone assessment. This will give great practice for the students, if they can figure out how the tools work.
Although the ALEKS program does give similar problems compared to the Keystone, the tools are harder to use. In the beginning of the session, the program teaches the students how to use the tools. Once the first session is done, students will move on to the test part. The test part helps students with the problem. It teaches a small lesson on the problem. Also, at the end it will give students their results on how they did. Which will let the students know what they need to work on for the Keystones.
With Cognitive Tutor, students can do all of the work right on the computer. On this new program, the work must be written out on a piece of paper and then type the final answer into the answer box. This process is worse because the student will not know that they did something wrong until they go to enter your final answer. On Cognitive Tutor, it tells the user step by step if one of the answers was wrong, that way they could learn what was wrong wrong right away. At the end of a session it does not show the results like the ALEKS program does.
Trying new things in education is sometimes scary. So the school will find out, when it comes to May, when the students take the Keystone again. Will it help or hurt the knowledge of the students?
